Hiring Better: Tools for Finding and Selecting Staff at All Levels

Whether you are hiring library workers for the first time or the 40th, this webinar will help you hire better. Presenter Emily Weak, founder of Hiring Librarians, draws on over a decade of her experience speaking to thousands of professionals about their perspectives on hiring – and being hired – in libraries and the greater LIS field.

This webinar will provide an overview of emerging (and a few established) hiring trends. Attendees will find options – small and large steps, adjustments to traditional practices, and whole new directions – they can take to improve their recruitment and selection of staff at all levels.

While she will touch on many trends, here are two key areas:

1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is an area of burgeoning focus in LIS. For example, in 2021, in one of only four revisions since its creation in 1939, the ALA added a new DEI-focused principle to its Code of Ethics. DEI is a reflective process, and libraries that have already committed to incorporating DEI will benefit from this webinar’s discussion of practices and experiences. And in many libraries, hiring processes remain stagnant and have not caught up to this change. This webinar will provide a friendly, practical, and encouraging resource to assist in improving practices.
2. The LIS field is also dealing with a post-pandemic-induced reckoning. Workers in all fields, and library workers in particular, are re-evaluating their commitment to jobs that previously seemed okay. Library workers are looking for new jobs, and they want jobs that treat them better, starting from their very first interaction: the hiring process. This webinar will explore how to meet the higher standards and expectations of today’s workforce.

Hiring Better benefits everyone; when libraries find better, more contented staff, and staff will find more fulfilling workplaces.

LEARNING AGENDA:

• An overview of library hiring trends. Stories, examples, and perspectives from other practitioners will allow participants to benchmark their own experiences.
• Hiring is often an isolated process. The norms of a single institution are often taken as norms for all institutions, and people are unable to see alternatives. Library leaders who hire will benefit from seeing where their organization is situated in the larger spectrum of possibilities.
• At the end of the session, participants will be able to list three practical, achievable steps their library organizations can take to improve their hiring processes.

This 60-minute overview session on is another in our “Essential Librarian Series,” designed to be shown to new staff and leaders and to provide a refresher for all who work in the library. The presentation slides will be available to all who participate.

CALL Training Partner: Library 2.0